Starting the motor with no gearbox

[Dras]

My gearbox side crank shaft seal is leaking, again. I replaced it back in April and it wasn't much fun. This morning I noticed a few drops of oil on the garage floor and it appears that I have a slow oil leak.

My question is, has anyone tried to start the motor with no gearbox attached? This is not a job I want to repeat and I would want to test it before I put everything back together. Now the challenges I see with this are that the motor would need to be properly braced so that it doesn't move too much as 3 of the 4 engine mounts will be missing and the starter motor will need to be somehow attached to the motor in a strong enough way to allow it to start the motor.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Storm]

Thoughts or suggestions?

Don't even try! It's not going to tell you anything of value.

[vipfto]

Thoughts or suggestions?

Don't even try! It's not going to tell you anything of value.

yip wont acheive anything, prob with replacing seals is they can still leak so if not broke dont fix it

[Bennoz]

Welcome to come round to my place & try... thats exactly how my motor is sitting at the moment

[Dras]

Welcome to come round to my place & try... thats exactly how my motor is sitting at the moment

Would you happen to have a gearbox shell with no internals (other than your box ) that I could use for this?

An empty box would be nice and light and with a couple of bolts it would secure the whole assembly so that I can run the motor for a few hours and then check for leaks.

My biggest fear is that this is due to a bearing on the crank dying and that no matter what I do, it will leak till I rebuild the motor.

[Bennoz]

Mate if you had a crank bearing that was so worn that it was chewing out the oil seal, your symptoms would be a whole lot worse than a few oil drips. Catastrophically so...

I reckon you've either damaged the seal putting it in, or some debris has got into it & damaged it.

Unless its not coming from that seal... sure its sump oil & not box oil?

[Dras]

The oil is black so I am pretty sure it is engine oil, but I am not sure if it coming from the seal or from the plate that hold the oil seal in place i.e. there might be a gap in the bead of ultra gray that holds that plate against the motor.

[Storm]

The oil is black so I am pretty sure it is engine oil, but I am not sure if it coming from the seal or from the plate that hold the oil seal in place i.e. there might be a gap in the bead of ultra gray that holds that plate against the motor.

When I did mine I stripped the plate out then realised I could have done it so much easier by just gently prying the seal out of the plate itself

Wurths 250 degree sealant and no leaks any more

I also changed the other side when I did the cam belt, for under a tenner it seemed foolish not to.

[Dras]

Yeah, I did mine at the same time as the timing belt so I did the crank and cam seals at the same time.

Everything on the cam belt side seems perfect, although I haven't removed the covers to have a look yet.

[Dras]

Well, I put some paper down and I learnt 2 things.

1. it is leaking worse than I thought
2. it is gearbox oil that is leaking

[Bennoz]

Gearbox main... bugger. So much work for a 2 dollar part!

[Dras]

I don't think it is the gearbox main seal, it was replaced when I got the box reconditioned. I think it is the driveshaft seal. I don't have any spare gearbox oil or have any idea how much is left in the box and I need to get to work on Monday so I didn't try running the motor.

The engine oil I believe was coming from the little hose the connects the 2 rocker covers together. I have replaced the hose because the original was looking pretty terrible on the inside and the new hose is a slightly larger diameter than the old hose and there was oil dripping from both ends. I have added 2 hose clamps and will see how it goes.

The thing that was unsettling me was that from under the car the oil appeared to be coming from where the head meets the block, but I am hoping it was just pooling there on its way down.